Computer Science, Prifysgol Cymru Aberystwyth University of Wales

C375(h)* - Database Management Systems

Brief Description

Aims, Objectives, Syllabus, Booklist

Further Details

Number of lectures

20

Number of seminars/tutorials

4

Number of practicals

0

Coordinator

Dr. Fred Long

Other staff involved

Not yet known

Pre-requisites

None

Co-requisites

CS27220 (or C272 as a pre-requisite)

Incompatibilities

None

Assessment

Assessed coursework - 20%
Written exam - 80%

Timing

This half module is offered only in Term 1

• discuss the relative merits of a variety of external storage devices;
• describe the components of a database management system in terms of the services they provide;
• explain and apply query processing strategies and techniques;
• compare and contrast a variety of transaction processing and concurrency control techniques;
• discuss the aims, objectives and relative merits of a variety of reliability and recovery mechanisms.

External storage devices and systems - 2 Lectures

Database components - 1 Lecture

Storage and retrieval strategies and mechanisms - 9 Lectures

Primary access methods; classification of access methods, hashed access file organisation, indexed files (sparse index), B+ trees, files with a dense index. Files with variable length records. Secondary indices; inverted file organisation, multilist files, partitioned hash functions, partial match retrieval with signature trees. Hashing techniques for expandable files.

Query processing - 3 Lectures

Different kinds of query; ad-hoc, embedded, update. Need for query optimisation. Optimisation strategies; algebraic strategies, implementation dependent strategies. Optimising relational expressions. Generating query plans for the optimised expression and selecting the cheapest. Query optimisation in some sample database management systems. Query optimisation by tableau minimisation.

Transactions and concurrency control - 3 Lectures

The nature of transactions. Transaction integrity, atomicity, permanence, independence. Concurrency control. Serializability, schedules. Locking. Starvation and deadlock, Deadlock prevention, Deadlock detection and resolution, Timestamping.

Reliability and recovery - 2 Lectures

Major types of failure; aborted transactions, incorrect data, system failure, database destruction. Recovery mechanisms; backup, audit trail, checkpoint facility. The recovery manager. Recovery and restart procedures; restore and rerun, rollback roll forward. Recovering from different kinds of failure.

Students are likely to need ready access to the following

J.G. Hughes. Database Technology, A Software Engineering Approach. Prentice-Hall, 1988.

C.J. Date. An Introduction to Database Systems. Addison-Wesley, 5th. edition, 1990.

Version 2.1

Nigel Hardy Departmental Advisor